tl;dr

give coupons to gamers/moms/mall goers/etc. in exchange for processing time

coupons create incentive for more selfish people

positive PR for companies supporting BOINC is free advertising for BOINC

reach out to twitch streamers for help






The long version:


The idea:

Partner up with some businesses and exchange the BOINC points in some amount for coupons on several products that could be redeemed say through a smart phone app if in a store, or a code to be redeemed for online purchases. One problem I've seen people having with using programs such as BOINC is the mentality of "what do I get out of this."


potential results include but are not limited to:
people saving money on products
companies increased sales
companies good PR
BOINC gets free advertising from the PR of the companies
incentivised using BOINC


This isn't a win-win, its more like a win-win-win-win-win




several places to start implementing this:

I'd suggest maybe contacting companies like Valve and RIOT games (and other video game developers) as gamers have some of the most powerful PC's and spend tons of money on games through steam or League of Legends RP system. Gamers do sleep contrary to popular belief and once in a while do irl things like school or work so their computers aren't always in use. To reach the gaming community via advertising, there are several streamers on twitch.tv that would gladly promote programs like BOINC no questions asked to the masses. Several of these streams may even decide to do things like charity 24 hour streams or a 24 hour "BOINC awareness" type of thing. The gaming community by in large loves the scientific community and supporting charity type things, especially if they can get free stuff out of it, or support the project for free.

You could also contact food companies as mom's want to save as much money in the supermarket as possible, and many stores that are typically found in malls (gamestop, sears, etc.) as normal people like science also.

Is twitch.tv and PR not working/helping? If advertising is still an issue you could implement a referral system. People that suggest other people to join BOINC could get some limited/capped amount of extra points based on their friends' points gained. Keeping it from an immediate value keeps people from creating second accounts just to get free stuff without donating computer time.




separate idea/idea 2

another group of people that have decent systems are Linux users. Message the developers of some distros and flavours and see if they would pre-pack them with BOINC.

EDIT: these forums seem kind of dead, does anybody even read these, or should I be emailing this suggestion to somebody?